Health IT

Thanks Om - this is very interesting feedback.

Sophie,

my pleasure.

The abundance of options right now really makes the defining of agreed to
features/functions a great place to dream right now.

Literally anything can be created, including translators for collating
different reporting formats.

This (GHDonline) is the closest thing I have seen yet to a working group
with the range and ability to create/refine a standard and develop an
universal tool.

I'm sure that if an initiative were to be publicly anounced, the community
would quickly coalesce.

I actually thought about creating a ghost project at Sourceforge.org so
that interested parties could join the planning phase.

Is this something that GHD would like to be part of?

Om

Definitely! Please keep us in the loop on this - GHD is always looking for partnerships and collaboration opportunities. Best, Sophie

Hi Om -
Could you elaborate on what you mean by a universal tool or what type of
project you are envisioning?

On the Mobile side, there are several efforts to great groups of open source
tools that can play well together:

OpenRosa - a consortium focuses on open source mobile data collection with
its first open source collaborative effort being JavaRosa (
http://code.javarosa.org)
Open Mobile - a consortium of groups that both develop and implement
projects and are having a Hackathon at MIT to plug together the member
organizations existing open source projects: (http://www.open-mobile.org)

thanks,
Jonathan

Jonathan,

great to hear from you. Sophie, thanks for the enthusiasm.

What I'm talking about is how so many efforts literally languish because a
'home' hasn't been created for interested collaborators to join in.

Reluctant to begin something anew, or because there is a perception (or
truth) that "this must have been done already" I find that talented people
will wait on the sidelines.

Here we have a depth and breadth of experience and ability as well as a
mission that is actually in place, on the ground, establishing real world
practical application.

I'm not a specialist, but I have seen great things happen once a 'home' is
created to form the nexus of an inclusive project. Open ID and Attention
Profile/Data Portability come to mind.

I think the tool that is created will also have interest from peace groups
who are chronicalling social health and well being, educational
initiatives, collaborative activities etc. to help produce a comprehensive
view of the state of a state, as it were.

I understand that a few working groups have their own trajectory and I'm
very glad to hear about the MIT effort. It seems to me that there ...

Jonathan,

great to hear from you. Sophie, thanks for the enthusiasm.

What I'm talking about is how so many efforts literally languish because a
'home' hasn't been created for interested collaborators to join in.

Reluctant to begin something anew, or because there is a perception (or
truth) that "this must have been done already" I find that talented people
will wait on the sidelines.

Here we have a depth and breadth of experience and ability as well as a
mission that is actually in place, on the ground, establishing real world
practical application.

I'm not a specialist, but I have seen great things happen once a 'home' is
created to form the nexus of an inclusive project. Open ID and Attention
Profile/Data Portability come to mind.

I think the tool that is created will also have interest from peace groups
who are chronicalling social health and well being, educational
initiatives, collaborative activities etc. to help produce a comprehensive
view of the state of a state, as it were.

I understand that a few working groups have their own trajectory and I'm
very glad to hear about the MIT effort. It seems to me that there is an
imperative to gather ideas, flesh out necessary features, and converge
with some standards as a baseline.

One major complaint of the different systems is incompatible formats and
quality of reporting tools. We have some excellent ones out there rigt now
and the reason I got here in the first place was through a friend's system
that is nicely scaleable and already in use by the WHO tracking animal
health. I was looking for projects that needed such a thing.

As I have learned more about the landscape it becomes clear that action is
required to keep pace with development and greatly facilitate care in
places that really need it. So I guess I'm a bit frustrated to learn about
how disparate the elements are right now.

I'm involved with Karuna Center and have been in the medical world and
have become interested in GIS over the past few years, so I see some
opportunity to facilitate and motivate development in these combined
disciplines.

I enjoy the discussion here and would like to explore how a framework
might be established.

It seems like an appropriate audience+locus, in combination with the
Rwanda project, that could well be a model for more widespread application.

Om